


Aflame

by nirejseki



Series: Aflameverse [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychopaths, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Murder, Non-Explicit Sex, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, but not that divergent from canon, i think, main characters get hurt, mutiny on the Waverider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 09:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8051104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: When Mick gave himself to the flames, a moment of ecstasy and terror so complete he almost believed in God again, he regretted nothing. (in which everyone is a little more ruthless than canon and Mick Rory doesn't like it when you touch his stuff)





	Aflame

When Mick Rory gave himself to the flames, a moment of ecstasy and terror so complete he almost believed in God again, he regretted nothing. When he woke up, burned down to his true self, the unimportant flaking off like so much ash, a few things remained. 

He was almost surprised to find that Snart was one of them, but not really. He's never been one for hoarding material goods - he's more likely to destroy them - but what he decides is his, he _keeps_. Forever. No matter what.

Snart likes to fancy himself possessive. 

He has no idea.

When Mick was seven, he found a cat hiding behind the bales of hay, hissing at his big brother's dog and trying to hide how pathetic it was. It had one eye and limped like one its legs didn't work, and Mick had fed it scraps for three weeks until it finally consented to being petted.

He hadn't even thought of a name for the cat when his neighbor, speeding in his brand new big-city car to show off for the big-city girlfriend who was half his age, ran it over.

Mick had buried the cat with his own hands.

He cut the brake lines on his neighbor's car with his own hands, too. It made the most beautiful sparks when it spiraled into the ditch, nearly as beautiful as the electrical fire Mick had set as a toddler by pulling on the wrong, frayed cord, the one that had nearly covered the nursery before someone ran in to pull him from his crib. Nearly as beautiful as the little fires that Mick had started setting out back behind the house, leaves and books and things, now that he knew how to use matches.

They cremated the neighbor and scattered his ashes. If Mick had known that was a thing, he would have done it for the cat. 

He still knows where that cat's grave is, and in his most secret vault, the one not even Snart knows about and the police have never found, he still has the collar he bought for it. 

After his family burned, Mick had nothing and no one and found himself quite content with that state of affairs. People were burdens, things were distractions. The only thing that mattered was fire, and fire consumes everything in its wake. Mick is not depressed or suicidal, no matter what the adults might murmur; he just wants the world to burn, and to burn right along with it. 

Everyone stays away from him after the fire, faux-sympathetic adults and creeped-out kids alike. Mick had no intention of ever owning another thing again, burning whatever little possessions the firemen saved from his family home and living on the mercy of the juvenile detention center, wearing their clothing and eating their food with absolute indifference.

He saves little Leo Snart from the shiv coming his way on a whim, because Mick Rory had at that point never been in the custody of the police, having gone straight from the firemen to the child protection people, and did not yet believe that being a cop's kid was crime enough for a death sentence. He expects the kid to go his own way after that, but stupid little Leo Snart can't stay away from a shiny object if his life depended on it.

After the sixth time Snart comes back despite Mick chasing him off with curses and punches and kicks, Mick has the abrupt thought that Snart was like a moth to Mick's flame, and he likes the thought so much that the next time Snart oh-so-casually tries to sit next to him at lunch, his ribs still strapped up from Mick kicking them in an attempt to make the brat leave him be, Mick grunts and hands him his pudding cup.

Mick never liked vanilla anyway, but the expression on Snart's face - like Mick had handed him the keys to heaven - is something he finds that he likes. Snart's like that cat of his, skittish yet stupidly loyal, and even after he starts worshipfully following Mick around, even after Mick starts letting him, he flees from any touch softer than a blow. 

Mick decides to keep Snart. He knows it will be trouble, probably more trouble than it's worth, but Snart gives him the torn-out pages from his school-book and a single, forbidden match with a shy little smile, and Mick decides that he could do with some company on his way to the inferno.

He quickly finds Snart fascinating. Snart's a thief, a pickpocket and heist crew both, but he is also what Mick fancies the teachers mean when they talk about someone being "a good kid". Snart has an attitude that goes on for miles and a terror of physical contact, but he takes care of Mick even when Mick doesn't ask him to, cleaning up Mick's messes so that Mick doesn't get in trouble, and he's the first one to try to defend the other kids or to smuggle them some food when they've been sent to solitary without dinner.

Snart wants to be good. It's his first instinct, every time, but everything is against him. He even offers to help out the asshole who tried to kill him (he's rebuffed, of course, but he still offered). Mick's never met someone like that before. In most people, it disgusts him in its sheep-like naïveté, but Snart tries to do good like a man who’s only heard about it third-hand, lying on people’s behalf and stealing them things they want, and that’s far more amusing. 

Mick lets Snart follow him around, and he starts following Snart around, too. 

When he finds one of the older guys in juvie, a skinny guy, tall, with a way of staring just a little too long at some of the younger kids, leaning Snart back into a corner and talking to him in a way that’s made Snart freeze up, Mick walks up to them. The skinny guy quickly backs off, not wanting a fight, but Snart looks guilty, and that means this isn’t the first time they’ve had these little chats.

Mick waits until the middle of the night, that night. Then he goes and finds the skinny guy, name of Jeffery, and shoves a pillow in his mouth until he chokes and gasps and pisses himself. And then, because this guy has friends and they need to learn this lesson, too, Mick pulls the pillow off and replaces it with his hands and asks the guy a few questions.

Questions like “how many times” and “who was involved” and “who knew.”

The guy tells Mick what he wants to know and swears he won’t do it again.

Snart is pathetically grateful the next day, watching the guy limp around and twitch whenever anyone under the age of fifteen comes by.

(Jeffery Aldrich dies in a house fire a year after Mick is released from juvie, along with a few of his old buddies. Snart never learns about that, but Mick didn’t do it for Snart, anyway. He did it because no one – _no one_ – touches his stuff.)

Snart goes home after a few months, giving Mick his address and promising to be there at the gates when Mick gets out in turn. It takes a while, but he’s there, because of course he is, beaming large enough for that smile to split his face halfway across, and a black eye turning interesting colors.

It takes some prying – Snart is innately a private person, for all that he opens his heart to anybody who wants to tread on it – but those months in juvie carefully spent coaxing Snart out from behind the hay bale pay off and he confesses that his dad’s a bit of a drunk and a bit of a hitter.

Lewis Snart works for the cops and plays with the mafia, and he’s irritatingly lucky. Mick puts a firebomb under his car, but it only ends up blowing up the man’s partner instead.

Lewis Snart goes in for witness protection for a while there, until they can figure out who’s trying to kill him and why and if it’s related to his mafia contacts that he made in prison while working “undercover”, and his kids get sent to stay with their grandfather, so Mick figures he’ll count it as a win. 

Lisa Snart is a small, puling brat, and Mick has no idea why Snart likes her so much. He thinks about burning her, too, so Snart will stop being so distracted by her – he has it all planned out: the oven in the house is old and runs on gas, a birthday candle not snuffed out well enough, Snart taken out to the movies as a firm alibi for both of them – but then they have a fight, Lisa wanting Mick to go away because he’s big and he’s scary, and Snart viciously refusing and screaming back that he’s never leaving Mick, _not ever_ , and Lisa had damn well better get used to it.

Mick decides to be gracious and let Snart keep Lisa. He picks up a book on pet care and figures that it’s no different than a cat becoming attached to an irritating squeaky toy; you’ve got to be a little indulgent or else they get sickly and depressed, and that would be even _more_ annoying.

Important things settled, Mick turns to the business of making money. He doesn’t actually care about money all that much – he could live under a bridge for all he cares – but he likes beer and he likes hookers (though not as much as he likes Snart, who he ends up fucking one day in the height of summer when Snart is practically melting with the heat, his limbs so liquid that he barely needs any coaxing to relax enough to let Mick in) and he loves fire so much it hurts. 

Snart turns out to have something of an unappreciated genius for major heists, which Mick would not have expected. Mick joins Snart’s crews and calls him boss, and whenever Snart is getting uppity he puts his hand on the back of Snart’s neck and makes him kneel, but Snart gets them money, money enough to do as they like, when they like. Snart goes after weird shit, like paintings or sculptures, but they end up being able to fence them for more than the cash they’d be able to get from knocking over places that prefer liquidity. Snart stays away from the mafia, because that’s where his dad is, and that means they don’t have to pay tribute, so that’s good, too.

Mick finds that being Snart’s muscle is an excellent excuse to go beat up people who mouth off to Snart. As long as they don’t actually touch him, they get to limp off with bruises and broken bones. 

The first time someone shoots Snart, Mick takes Snart to the hospital and makes sure he’s okay before finding the guy that did it, breaking both of his knee caps, lighting the room he’s in on fire and locking the door from the outside, and then standing there, listening to the guy beg to be let out, please, the fire – he’s going to burn – he’s going to _die_ – _please_ , please let me out, I’m _sorry_ , I’ll never do it again, please, I’ll give you money, I’ll give you anything, _please_ – 

And then Mick goes back to the hospital and sits by Snart’s side until Snart woozily wakes up. “We should probably avoid that guy in the future,” Snart says, squeezing Mick’s hand. 

“Yeah,” Mick says. “He’ll probably still be pissed off at you.”

Snart laughs. “I got the goods, though, didn’t I?” he says, pleased with himself. 

“That you did,” Mick says. 

(Someone finds the remains ten years later in an old barrel, and it’s registered as a cold case that no one will ever solve.)

Mick keeps burning things, bigger fires, better fires. He follows Snart on his heists and he doesn’t let Snart follow him on his own little quests, communing with the flames. He gets caught a few times, of course, goes in to prison, but Snart usually breaks him out or goes in with him to serve sentences until they’re released on parole. Iron Heights is a hell of a place, but Central City has too much crime to keep people in for too long, so they keep getting out when, really, someone ought to put Mick away for good.

Maybe it’s because he’s never been caught burning something with people inside. 

(Snart’s always been very good at cleaning up Mick’s messes.)

Lisa Snart grows up and goes off her own way, Snart insisting on paying for the college he never got to go to for her, and Mick sends in a few applications on her behalf to some schools on the coasts. She gets a scholarship from one of them for her ice skating, which is very nearly Olympic level good, and Snart is over the moon about it.

Lisa looks over Snart’s shoulder at Mick, anger and confusion both, and Snart is so very convincing that Mick only wanted what’s best for Lisa, that he knew she wouldn’t realize the true extent of her abilities and her promise, that he wanted to show her that she could go anywhere she wanted, that she starts to doubt what she knows is the truth, which is that what Mick really wanted was for her to go away and leave him and Snart alone. 

Lewis Snart comes back a few times, and Snart gets better and better at hiding his bruises from Mick. When Mick demands an explanation, Snart says, eyes wide and earnest, that he knows it will upset Mick and he doesn’t want Mick to do something that he’ll regret, something he can’t take back. “I know you burn things and sometimes people, Mick,” Snart says. “But premeditated’s a bit of a jump, don’t you think?”

Mick shakes his head – Snart, naïve to the last – and goes to have a little chat with Snart Senior, a chat involving a pack of lit cigarettes and a few broken ribs to match the ones Snart is sporting, and after that Lewis Snart makes a point of only coming around when Mick is in prison or away for some reason.

(Snart eventually learns that he’s living with a killer, and tries to become a killer himself to match, but it’s never really quite his style. He tries, though, despite every instinct he has, and that pleases Mick, both because Snart will be better able to protect himself and because it shows how much Snart is _his_.)

Mick burns himself more than a few times through the years, both on purpose and by accident, but it’s on a job with Snart that he finds that moment of absolute bliss. The fire was supposed to start on one side, but some moron left a cigarette lit and it starts entirely randomly on the other side, too, and soon the entire warehouse is a glorious orgy of flame and smoke. It’s so beautiful that Mick casts aside all concerns, submitting himself to the only power he’s ever worshipped, and he emerges from his prior shell free of all concerns, just like he had been when he was young and his family burned and screamed around him. Snart’s still in there, though, because Mick keeps what’s his.

When Snart comes back to him, because all cats do if you let them lick their wounds long enough, he brings with him an offering of fire. After seeing what the heat gun can do, Mick fucks Snart in the shitty hotel room that they met in, and he takes the gun and presses it to Snart’s temple and whispers to him that one day he’ll burn Snart at his pyre because Snart is _his_ , and that’s what they used to do, isn’t it, in the ancient days, when a man died, they burned all the things that were his so that he could take it with him into the afterlife. Snart shakes beneath him, eyes wide and terrified and loving all the same and Mick could almost thank Snart’s father for making Snart such an easy mark for Mick, because Snart will never, ever be able to really leave Mick even though he knows that it means his death will one day come to him in flames.

(Lisa is much more tolerable now that she’s an adult and a criminal, and she’s long given up on her campaign to try to pull Snart away from Mick. She’s also the catalyst for Snart finally manning up and murdering that dad of his, so Mick’s not going to complain about her hanging around too much. The gold gun’s pretty sweet, too.)

They go on the Waverider when asked, because Snart’s always looking for the next big adventure, and it’s not like Mick’s got anything to tie him down anyway. Doesn’t matter where you go, space or time, there’s always something to burn. 

In doing so, though, Mick forgets something very important, and that’s the fact that for all of his theft and vandalism and murder and even melodramatic supervillainy, Snart is still that “good kid”, deep down inside. His first instinct is to do good, but everything in his life has been against him.

Rip Hunter gives Snart a chance to do good, and Snart loves it, loves it the way he loves stealing, loves it the way he loves Mick. Mick underestimates Snart’s devotion to the idea. He’s never underestimated Snart in his life; he doesn’t know why his ability to read Snart has gone so wrong here, but it has. When Mick sells out the crew to the pirates – because the crew is irritating and all of them, even Palmer, have a way of mistaking basic comradery for actual friendship, and he’s been too long without something to burn, even if it’s only bridges – Snart picks the crew over Mick. He even tries to dispose of Mick.

He can’t, of course. He’s a good kid. He’s _Mick’s_. But he can leave Mick there to pick him up again later, like one of their many stashes of loot.

Snart always did have delusions of being the one in charge.

The Time Masters come for Mick, and they strap him into a chair, and the chair is supposed to tear away everything that makes Mick who he is, burn out his heart and all his softer emotions until he’s hollow, grind him down until there’s nothing left but the person they call Kronos.

The chair finds nothing in Mick that it needs to delete. Mick could’ve told them that.

They don’t need to burn out his heart. He did it himself, years ago.

Kronos isn’t everything that Mick is, just that small cold little part of him that holds people down and burns them alive on purpose, the part that lets him hunt down and suffocate people who hurt Snart so that the police think it’s a strangler on the loose or maybe a crime of passion and even Snart doesn’t suspect it’s him with his so-obvious M.O. 

But despite what the Time Masters think, Kronos has _always_ been a part of Mick. It’s easy enough to let him out to play. It’s been too long since Mick punished Snart for getting uppity, and this heroism bullshit has been far too distracting. Mick can’t burn heroism – can’t burn an idea, though he’ll try – but he still has his trump card.

And the beautiful thing about time travel, as he tells Snart, is that he can burn Lisa again and again and _again_. 

But first, Mick’s going to find Snart’s little crew and burn them. _Especially_ Rip Hunter.

Just - Mick’s forgotten how irritatingly persistent Snart is. 

\-----------------------------------

Mick sits alone in his cell, and he watches the world outside. The crew come to try to talk to him, thinking he’s been brainwashed, thinking all sorts of things, but they don’t get him out, either to kill him or to let him go. Sara comes, talking about her time in the League; Jax comes, apologetic and remorseful; Hunter comes, talking about the mission and the world and the way Mick could make up for what he’s done.

He watches Snart most of all.

Snart, who iced his own hand and smashed it so that he could crawl his way to the center of a league of deadly assassins, just to tell the crew not to hurt Mick, and isn’t that just like him.

It’s his dominant hand, too. Snart’s eyes are white all around the iris and Mick knows it hasn’t hit him yet, the sacrifice he’s made for Mick, because of Mick. Mick’s not worried. The Waverider has regenerative capabilities, and while he didn’t realize it when it happened the first time, he knows enough now to know that they were all scanned by Gideon when they first came aboard, their DNA patterns and biological readings frozen in time. (Snart had been getting over a mild cold when they’d come aboard the first time, which he’d hidden well but made him just a little more nasal than usual; Mick amuses himself with the thought that Gideon’s regen process would by necessity reinfect him with that disease and he’d be all scratchy-throated and sulky about it). 

Except –

It doesn’t happen.

It’s a day later, and Snart’s wrapped up his iced over stump in bandages that turn red as the ice begins to melt.

It’s two days later, and Snart’s found better bandages, and also the best way to walk that hides his impairment.

It’s three days later, and Mick sees the answer to the puzzle piece that’s been missing all this time. Snart and Hunter are walking through the hallway, not far from Mick’s cell, and Hunter puts a hand on Snart’s shoulder, standing right where Snart has a view of Mick, which coincidentally means Mick has a view and an ear on them too.

“– and you really must put in your best effort, Mr. Snart,” Hunter says. “I understand it’s difficult for you, given your injury, but I did bring you and your partner aboard to help with this mission. Your partner is lost, but we have hope of bringing him back – you do want him back, do you not?”

“Yeah,” Snart says, and something in his shoulders curves down the way it always did whenever Lewis was around.

“The Time Masters have terrible tortures,” Hunter says. “They have machines that reach into your brain, pull out memory after memory, inch by inch. It’s agonizing, I’ve heard. You hear the screams, sometimes; it’s like a man facing hell.”

Snart shudders.

He doesn’t shake off Hunter’s hand.

“I can help you get him back, Mr. Snart,” Hunter says. “When our mission is over. But the loss of your hand does mean that you are significantly less useful, and unless you start to pull your own weight again, I will have no choice but to drop you and Mr. Rory back off in 2016 – _without_ being able to take the time to assist you in repairing Mr. Rory’s brain. I would if I could, of course, but our mission must take precedence.”

“I’ll do better,” Snart says, and his shoulders slump down just that little bit more. “I can’t do anything about the hand, but I’ll do better.”

Hunter squeezes Snart’s shoulder. “You do that, Mr. Snart. You do that.”

Mick watches, his eyes narrow. 

That shouldn’t have happened.

He lies back down on the bench that serves as his bed and waits for Gideon to be busy redoing the calculations for the next jump. Hunter’s crew stripped Mick of all his Kronos gear, his helmet, his gun, his armor, and most importantly the time-piece mega-computer AI that he wore strapped on his wrist, but what he doesn’t tell them is that he took the AI chip out of that time-piece long ago and buried it in his own skin, instead.

It’s too useful a tool to risk losing. Besides, he likes his AI. He decided he was going to keep her, and the things Mick keeps, he keeps forever. 

“Ginny,” he says, _sotto voce_. “Activate. Chamber of Secrets protocol.”

“Yes, Kronos,” she says. She’s a more advanced AI than Gideon, more sneaky, and she loves Mick the way that Gideon loves Hunter, the savage and absolute devotion that an intelligent AI has to someone who loves them in return, and Gideon is so busy taking care of the bucket of bolts that the Waverider – Rip and his thing for history and nostalgia come back to kick his ass when it comes to tech vs tech – that she doesn’t notice Ginny sneaking her tendrils into the programming of the cell. 

It’s less than twenty minutes before Ginny has complete control over this part of the ship, faithfully passing along “no report” readings to Gideon to make sure the other AI doesn’t notice anything’s amiss. Mick could get out of the cell now, open the doors and go out, but he’s got other things on his mind.

“Show me Leonard Snart’s timeline,” he orders Ginny.

Now that he’s looking for it, looking _closely_ , he sees what he’s missed. It’s not that Mick started misjudging Snart after all those years together, no, it’s that Snart, himself, was just a little bit different. Before Hunter went on his little recruiting trip, he decided to stack the dice.

Mick watches Hunter visit Snart as a child, offering him help in an easily forgettable moment, visit him as a desperate teen to offer him some food, as an adult to open a door that needed opening, nothing so critical that Snart would remember it a week later, but which all together leaves its own mark. Mick watches Hunter impress himself on Snart’s subconscious as something good, something that can be trusted, something that _should_ be trusted. Watches Hunter manipulate other events, too: a little twist here, a little tweak there, and suddenly Snart’s seeing Hunter through the same battered eyes he used to look at his father, except unlike Lewis Snart, Hunter knows how to play someone as vulnerable as Snart. He flatters him, gives him the respect he wants, makes him happy, and then he cuts him right back down to the shape he wants him.

Mick’s done many things over the years, hurt Snart plenty both emotionally and physically, but he’s never wanted Snart to be anything but whatever he wants to be, free and clear and hopefully happy. He’s been happy when Snart follows in his footsteps, because it just shows how much Snart adores him, but he never forced the issue. He didn’t make Snart a killer; Snart did that on his own.

Hunter won’t fix Snart’s hand because it makes Snart more vulnerable, more dependent, and Hunter knows after all that research that Snart is very nearly ambidextrous, can shoot just fine with either hand, and that beautiful brain of his will still work just as well without a hand. But now that brain will answer to Hunter, because Hunter has Mick to dangle in front of Snart and Snart still loves Mick more than anything else in the world, and Snart will be so beaten down, feeling so _worthless_ , that he won’t even realize that he’s sold himself to slavery for a prize that will always be out of reach. Always behind glass doors.

Hunter’s own series of visits to Mick’s cell start to make more sense. Hunter’s narrow-minded and vicious, but he knows an opportunity when he sees one. He’ll dangle Mick over Snart’s head like a prize, saying that Mick’s brain-damaged or something, and as for Mick – well. 

Hunter never bothered to do the whole prep sessions with Mick, because Mick didn’t have anything he wanted, but now Mick’s no longer a piece of “meat”, Snart’s plus-one. Now that Mick is Kronos, now that Mick has intel that Hunter wants, Hunter magically finds a cell to keep Mick in, and don’t think Mick doesn’t know that Hunter told the crew that there wasn’t any place to keep Mick before egging Snart on to try to eliminate him. 

Mick knows because it’s just what he would have done, except that he never made Snart have to kill the friends that were starting to get too close and starting to interfere with the way Mick liked things. He just did it himself, and Snart assumed that they moved on without him. Criminals do that, after all. 

No, now that Mick’s potentially useful, Hunter’s got plans for Mick, too. He just hasn’t done his research well enough, early enough, and once Mick became Kronos he set up protections against people looking too closely into his timeline.

Hunter’s little comments about Mick “making up” for what he’s done start to sound less like the usual Time Master priggishness and start to sound a lot more like the appeals of someone who looked at Mick’s devoutly religious upbringing, the fire that lost him his parents, the way he and Snart make up to each other after they’ve screwed up (Mick has done his share of fuck-ups, he’s not too crazy to admit that, and he’s always been good at soothing a Snart that feels like his tail’s been pulled the wrong way), and come to all the wrong conclusions. 

Mick’s only god is fire, and fire needs nor wants forgiveness. 

Everyone always thinks that his love affair with fire started with his house burning down, all of them but Snart, who seems to think that Mick was born out of the ground whole and entire and absolutely perfect, and everyone is always, always wrong. His parents’ and pastor’s best efforts aside, Mick doesn’t see his actions as sins that need to be cleansed with confession and redemption.

Mick cleanses his sins in fire, and fire only cleanses when it destroys.

Mick starts thinking about how best to fix what Hunter has wrought.

He wonders how much of the rest of the crew has been affected, too; looks it up and sees the same pattern in some of them: Lance and Palmer (who barely needed any, to no one’s surprise) and Stein. Kendra and Carter, of course, barely needed any persuasion to go fight their own personal big bad, or so Mick assumes – and so Hunter assumed, too, or at least he assumed Carter would want to go and he was right – and Jax seems to have been brought along for the ride the way Mick was. Hunter knew he could count on Stein forcing Jax to go, because the two of them are bound together and Stein wouldn’t be able to go if Jax didn’t, and Stein’s a ruthless bastard when he’s in pursuit of what he wants. Jax isn’t important to Hunter. He’s just the other half of Firestorm.

The _muscle_ to Stein’s brain.

Seems like Hunter’s got a way of thinking that muscle’s less important all around.

Jax is the only one who seems to visit Mick because he feels bad about what happened, too. He has that same look in his eyes, hungry for affection and validation, that Snart always had. No abuse in the Jackson household, no, but Jax is lonely, desperately lonely, and his desire to _do good_ has been manipulated by everybody: his family who loves him and wants to keep him close, his old friends and teammates who left him when he wasn’t as shiny, but more than anything by the Flash, who wanted someone to keep Stein alive and didn’t care what they had to sacrifice from their lives to do it. Jax isn’t even twenty-one and he’s bound himself for life to a man old enough to be his grandfather – and who knows what’ll happen when Stein dies, whether for foolishness or old age, whether Jax’s brand-new Firestorm matrix will blow him up before he ever gets a chance to find another perfect match. Jax didn’t want to be a hero, but he couldn’t say no when someone needed help and he’s been cut off from “normal” humanity ever since. Jax didn’t want to come on this trip either, but he’s making the best of it.

Maybe Mick should think about keeping him, too. 

Something to consider later on. Snart came first, after all.

There’s work to be done. 

He starts with Sara, since she’s the lynchpin. Flipping through her timeline shows him everything he needs, just as it did Hunter before him.

He mentions, off-handedly, the way the chair works. Talks about how the Time Masters look through your timeline before they strap you in there, looking for weak spots. Family members, grudges, sore spots, vulnerabilities. 

Sara wants for Mick to be redeemable so badly. She listens. 

Hunter allows it. It supports his worldview that Mick believes in confession. The more confession Mick does now, the more open he’ll be to manipulation later.

“– and, of course, there’s the pre-visits,” he says casually one day, sitting with his back to the glass and Sara with her back pressed against the same place. He doesn’t need to see her dead on to track her movements and expressions; Ginny has helpfully made him a little mirror, up where Sara won’t be able to see it but he can.

“Pre-visits?” she asks. 

“Yeah, of course,” he says with a shrug. “You know how it is. You want someone to like you, you make a good first impression, ideally when they’re too young to know better, and then when you meet up with them later they already like you a bit. Same as Hunter did with us. Now, in my case, it was different, of course –” He keeps talking, but he pays close attention to what’s happening at his back.

Sara’s stilled. 

“Mick,” she says carefully, interrupting him. “Why do you think Hunter visited us ahead of time?”

“Looked it up in the files when I was hunting you down,” he says dismissively. “You were – what, ten? He took you on a pony ride or something, your very first one. You didn’t look at the face of the guy leading you around, of course, not right next to a real life pony, but you’ve had positive associations with it ever since. Anyway, as I as saying –”

She creeps out of his cell later, earlier than she would have normally.

Mick has Ginny take over Sara’s room that night, leaving him locked in his cell; only one infected room at a time is safe, in his view, even if Ginny earnestly swears that she can totally take Gideon on in an AI battle royale. 

Ginny reports back that Sara did access the timeline and saw exactly what Mick wanted her to see, and Gideon’s none the wise about it.

Sara comes back the next day, a break in her usual pattern of showing up every other day for an hour. She makes small talk for a while, then zeroes in on what she really wants to talk about. “Mick,” she says. “How influential are the pre-visits?”

Mick shrugs expansively. “You know how you look at a person and get a gut feeling about them, whether they’re trustworthy?” he says. “It’s like that. Doesn’t change your mind, of course, but if you’re on the line between a yes and a no, it’ll push you. Not that it matters in your case, of course, what with your sister and all.”

“My sister?” she asks, frowning. “What about – you mean her encouraging me to come on the Waverider so I could be a hero?”

“Did she do that?” Mick asks, feigning ignorance. “That’s cute. I guess as good-byes go, it ain’t too bad.”

“Good-byes?” Sara asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Mick says in his best dumb-grunt-doesn’t-care voice. “Laurel Lance, 1985-2016, got stabbed with an arrow or something like that.” He shrugs. “You know, after I found out, I always wondered how Hunter got you to come along on this trip so close before your sister’s death, especially since he doesn’t have any intention of taking you back to 2016 in time to help out. What’d he say to convince you, anyway? That if you were involved, she wouldn’t be the only one that dies, maybe another family member will die too, so it’s best not to mess with the timeline?”

That was a pretty standard Time Master routine. Mick has no doubt that Hunter wouldn’t bother deviating if Sara ever found out about it.

“He didn’t say anything,” Sara says. “He didn’t – did he _know_?”

“Sure,” Mick says. “In all the history books, right next to Green Arrow the first, there’s the entry for Black Canary. Your sis’s a real hero.” He lets his voice sneer in disdain, which isn’t all that hard. Heroes. Who needs ‘em?

Sara’s shaking with rage.

“I guess it doesn’t matter so much,” Mick says, sliding the knife home. “You being an undead assassin and all; I guess he must not’ve thought you’d care. You’re his trump card against the rest of us, after all, aren’t you?”

“Did Snart tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Mick asks, frowning. 

“About Russia,” she clarifies.

“I wasn’t really talking to him after Russia, if you remember – we went straight to 2046 after that, and then there was that clusterfuck.”

(Of course Snart told him about Russia and Sara’s role in regard to Stein; he gave Mick the whole download on the way out of the gulag and filled in the rest later that night when he curled into Mick’s arms. But it sounds so much better if it’s just Mick guessing, doesn’t it?)

Sara leaves, and she’s angry.

That’s all Mick really needs, because a killer with anger issues is the easiest clay in the world to mold, but Mick still works on Jax next, following the Waverider’s little sojourn to the Wild West, just because he can. It’s easy: the kid already feels guilty as hell about allowing Mick to be “killed”, and he’s always been a bit more distant from the rest of the team.

“You got kidnapped?” Mick says. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Jax says with a sigh.

“They came after you right away, right?” Mick asks, knowing perfectly well from the shouted conversations in the main bridge that he can hear from his cell that they did not. “I hate all of you traitorous dogs, but even I wouldn’t leave you out there.”

“You – wouldn’t?” Jax says, distracted from explaining what had really happened.

“Yeah, of course,” Mick says, giving Jax a weird look like Jax is the one being slow. “It’s, what, 1871? That’s like five years after the Civil War, and we’re in the West where all the Confederate soldiers came when they couldn’t handle being in the Reconstructed South anymore, and you’re a healthy looking Black man. Lynching’s probably the nicest thing they’d do to you – after cutting off some choice bits, I’d imagine –”

Jax swallows hard. “I – they didn’t do that.”

“Of course,” Mick says. “’cause you got rescued, right?”

“…yeah.”

“Snart’s mom was Black, too,” Mick says thoughtfully. “He doesn’t look it, but he’s always been sensitive to that sort of thing.”

This is true, but also irrelevant. Snart watches the same movies as anybody else and has the same blind spots, thinking of the Wild West as totally separate from the rest of the states – but Snart is, at his core, a _good kid_ , and Mick is willing to throw the dice that Snart would’ve done something stupid to try to help.

“He didn’t want to leave without me,” Jax says, almost unconsciously, proving Mick’s dice roll came up perfect sevens. “He – Jonah made him pull back, Jonah and Ray – they _left_ , and he was trying to come back, but they yelled that he couldn’t do anything to help me with just one hand –”

Really? Fucking assholes. 

“Rip said he got me back, but he waited to do a proper shoot down at high noon,” Jax says starting to get angry. “He got his stupid moment of drama, but I coulda been _killed_.”

“I’m sure they would’ve noticed it when Stein started losing body parts,” Mick says poisonously. “After all, it ain’t like Stein could have just ridden in there under flag of truce, grabbed you, did your whole merging thing and flown out, right?”

Jax gets up and walks out, snarling, too angry to say goodbye.

It’s okay. Mick’s not taking it personally.

The rest of it just takes time. First the Hunters, then the Omega Protocols – they’re running scared, now. Sara’s angry, now, and Jax is angry, and Snart still loves Mick most of all.

That should be enough.

Sara comes to visit him in the middle of the night, and she has his time-piece in her hands.

“Hey, Mick,” she says, fake-cheery. “Don’t suppose you know how to get some privacy around here, do you?”

“First two buttons on the left create a zone of privacy,” Mick lies. “Come to kill me at last?”

She presses the buttons (which actually just turn on the timer and recorder, but they make an impressive sound when they do). 

“No,” she says. “I want to know – is there any way to save Laurel, that you know of?”

“Can’t know until you try,” Mick says with a shrug. “Endless permutations of time and all that.”

“Rip said the timeline was fixed, that it would be either just her or – or her and my dad and me, too. Just like you said he would.”

“I’m sure that’s the case if you go back alone,” Mick says. “Of course, if we _all_ go back, with a time ship, and all our guns –” He pauses. “Plus the medical bay on board, of course.”

“The medical bay,” Sara whispers. “The _medical bay_ , shit, I _knew_ he was lying, that filthy little rat bastard –”

“Why do you need the privacy, birdie?” Mick says. “You could say that to his face.”

“I could,” she says grimly. “But I think there’s something in there of who you used to be, something of Mick Rory. I don’t think it’s all gone. And I think you can help us get out of this mess.”

“Us?” Mick echoes.

“Us,” Jax says, stepping out from the shadows where he’s been lurking and Mick’s been pretending not to see. “Sara wants to save her sister and I want off this trip.”

“I think Hunter did something to Snart, too,” Sara says. “He hasn’t been acting like himself – even counting for the thing with his hand.”

“He’s been acting like a beaten up kid is how he’s been acting,” Jax says cuttingly, and Mick remembers that Jax was with them on that ill-fated emerald heist. “And Rip’s been playing the other side of that playbook like a pro. You don’t do that with someone with a history like Snart’s – shit, Mick, you need to help him. The guy flinches when people raise a hand to him.”

Mick’s eyes narrow. “Did someone?” he asks.

They exchange guilty looks.

“Who?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Sara says. “He and Rip were arguing over something, and I think it just got out of hand –”

“Then it’s exactly _like that_ ,” Mick says.

“Mick, we need to know if we can trust you,” Jax says. “We’re about to go after our younger selves to stop the Omega Protocols, and there’s a chance our parents will never know who we are. The way things have been going, I just can’t trust Rip to have our best interests at heart, you know?”

“I can stop the Pilgrim,” Mick says, and it’s true – he can.

“What do you want in exchange?” Sara asks. “Don’t say Snart; I don’t trade in people.”

Mick pretends to think about it.

“How about the ship?” he says. “I know how to drive a time ship, you know.”

“What about Savage?” Sara asks.

“What about him?” Mick asks, unimpressed. “You want to kill him, sure, we’ll kill him. It’ll be difficult, what with the Time Masters playing on his side –”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah, sure, I saw him at the Vanishing Point,” Mick says. He’s lying his ass off – he has no idea if the Time Masters are backing Savage or not, but it sounds good and dirty, and nothing gets a hero’s goat like corruption does. “That’s why I know we can kill him. But only if I’m in charge.”

Sara and Jax exchange glances.

“You were willing to kill us,” she says. “You _tried_ to kill us.”

“That’s before I sat in this box for two weeks talking to all of you,” Mick says smoothly, because people who try the talking cure like to think that it works. “Now I’m realizing how much the Time Masters have dicked me over and I want back on them, too. Snart and me – we’ll hash out our differences in our own time. Revenge first.”

“And after we kill Savage,” Sara says. “We save my sister – is that clear?”

“Kill Savage, save your sister, and in return I get the Waverider – and Hunter. We’ll save his family, I’m fine with that, but I want him in this cell so I can have a little chat with him about his behavior. That’s the deal.”

Hunter won’t leave that cell alive, but Mick’s not going to lay that card out yet.

Sara and Jax exchange glances one more time.

Then Sara reaches forward and unlocks the door.

Mick stands up. “I need you to disable Gideon,” he says. “There’s a localized EMP in the time-piece – bottom four buttons in a row, followed by typing in ‘boomstick’ in the keypad. Go to the main engineering bay and let it off there.”

“Are you sure?”

“We need to get Gideon out of commission before Hunter spaces us all, just like he did those pirates,” Mick says.

“Threw them all into deep space without a blink,” Jax mutters under his breath. “I shoulda known he wasn’t a hero then.”

“We’ll go,” Sara decides, and tugs Jax out of the room after her.

Mick bares his teeth and goes to find Hunter.

\---------------------------------

Turns out Ginny can, in fact, kick Gideon’s ass, especially if Gideon’s main core is knocked out by a localized Time Master tech-specific EMP and Mick can put Ginny’s chip straight into the main computer with only a minimum of blood loss. 

Hunter’s been sleeping at his desk and Mick’s on him before he can wake up at the sound of Gideon’s last-ditch effort alarm, grabbing his head and smashing his face down into the desk a few times until his face is smeared with blood. 

Mick loops an arm around Hunter’s neck, choking him so he can’t call out any instruction to Gideon. Normally, Mick’s not one for torture – he’ll kill people, sure, but that’s just justice – but after what Hunter did to Snart and to Mick, he’s really feeling in the mood. “I’m going to save your family,” Mick whispers in Hunter’s ear, because he knows it’ll confuse the living daylights out of Hunter. “But you’re not going to live to see them again.”

He snaps one of Hunter’s fingers between his own, making Hunter try to scream, expelling the last of his oxygen as he does. He’s unconscious in moments.

“Ginny, prep the cell,” Mick orders.

“Don’t.”

Mick turns to look at Snart, lingering by the doorway, shadows under his eyes. He looks tired and beaten down and like someone’s put him through the world’s worst wringer. His stump’s bandage is stained red with blood again.

“Why not?” Mick wants to know. Has Hunter gotten to Snart so far? And what’s Snart doing in Hunter’s room this late, anyhow? If Hunter’s been taking advantage of having beaten down Snart, Mick’s going to rip Hunter’s balls off and feed them to him. After setting them on fire.

“He’s probably got a way out of the cell built in, just in case someone takes it over,” Snart says. “There’s a bunch of smuggler’s holes all over the ship – though I never saw the cell until he opened that corridor, which he only did once you were in there. Haven’t had a chance to case it.”

Mick nods. That makes sense. Good to see Snart’s brain still works.

“You with me in this?” he asks.

He doesn’t offer not to kill Lisa. Snart’s smart enough to notice, and he bites his lip. 

“Well, Snart?”

“I’m with you,” Snart says. “You and me against the world.”

“Damn right it is,” Mick says. He watches Snart nod and finds that thoughts of punishment seem unappealing with a Snart this beaten down. “I’m not going to kill her.”

“You’re not?” Snart says, some glimmer of life coming back into his eyes.

“Hunter manipulated your timeline so he could push you into doing it,” Mick tells him, making Snart’s eyes go wide and glance down at the unconscious Time Master. “Best con in the world, time travel.”

Snart nods, accepting it and taking the forgiveness where he can. He knows he’s still going to be in for it later. “What do you need from me?” he asks instead.

“Handle the others – Sara and Jax are with me, helping take apart Gideon as we speak, but Stein, Ray, and Kendra are probably loose. Go get ‘em.”

It’s easy enough to take control of the ship with Ginny’s help, and Mick directs her to a place he knows well. The Pilgrim’s last target, the one she was heading towards when Mick left on this mission. There’s enough of a gap there to slide in the knife. 

“Sara,” he says into the intercom. “Get whatever rifle you’re most comfortable doing snipe shots with.”

He consults with Ginny – turns out Ray’s in the medlab, with Kendra by his side; the Pilgrim went after him, first, and very nearly got him. Mick’s the more obvious target, of course, with the death of his family being a near-perfect inflection point, as these things go, but Mick’s a prisoner and, as far as the Pilgrim knows, still on her side. 

Perfect.

He has Ginny lock Stein into his bedroom, then puts Hunter into Mick’s old bedroom and has Ginny lock that down. He somehow unsurprised when it turns out it does lock from the outside, and very securely, too. 

Snart reappears like a ghost, drifting to Mick’s side. It bugs Mick to see him like that. Hunter’s gonna _scream_ for death before Mick’s done with him.

“You got Kendra and Ray out of our hair?” Mick asks.

“Gideon keeps a mild chloroform-like substitute in her medbay,” Snart says. “We found out about it during the West. How are you planning on solving the Omega Protocols issue?”

“Headshot,” Mick replies. “Then we burn my enemies, and yours. Any objections?”

Snart shakes his head.

Sara’s only timid about dealing out death when it’s someone she knows, and it’s easy enough to go to where the Pilgrim is hunting down some poor snot’s prior self and executing him with a sadistic smile. No hero watching the Pilgrim work would feel the slightest hint of reluctance at putting the bitch down, looking at that smile. She’d liked Kronos, the Pilgrim did; she’d had that same sadistic smile on her face the entire time they fucked. She’d liked thinking that she was slumming it with him, the Time Master’s prize assassin and their judas goat. 

Mick steps out in front of her, wearing his Kronos armor. He watches her glance up at him in surprise and annoyance, and he smiles straight into her eyes when Sara’s bullet finds its home in the Pilgrim’s skull. Micromanipulation of time only helps you if you’re quick enough to realize you should use it, after all, and for all of his indifference towards the Pilgrim, he likes that her last thought was of him.

“Hey, birdie,” Mick says, still smiling at the corpse on the ground, half its head blown off. Hell of a gun that Sara picked; he likes that in a lady. “How do you feel about dressing like a cheap hooker version of Trinity?”

There’s silence on the comm for a long moment before it crackles back to life.

“Only if it gets dry-cleaned first.”

Ginny bitches about being used as a laundry service, in her own AI-ish way, and it’s the first thing that makes Snart smile since the time with the pirates. Mick’s pleased to see that they get along like a house on fire, Ginny coaxing out smiles and Snart freely providing snark and the affection the Time Masters’ AIs are so starved for. Two things, with an option out on three – Mick’s getting positively greedy.

Though if Sara doesn’t stop monopolizing all of Snart’s free time, she’ll find her way into the shallow grave that he plans to keep her sister from entering. Mick’s just saying.

“So where do we go next?” Sara says, dressed in the Pilgrim’s gear, her hair dyed to match. She’s two inches too tall, but they cut off part of the Pilgrim’s too-high shoes to make them match better. “The Vanishing Point?”

“I owe some people there something,” Mick says, and reclines in the captain’s chair. 

“Fire,” Snart says.

“Fire,” Mick agrees, and smiles savagely.

Getting into the Vanishing Point is as easy a slipping a hot knife right under someone's ribs. The guards are puzzled to see Kronos, who was known to be a prisoner, but the Pilgrim's ID code convinces them that she decided to finish Kronos' mission for him. 

Mick is more than happy to turn over his prisoners - Stein and Ray, Kendra and Rip - because it means that the Time masters trust him when he says earnestly that he's going to get them the others, and soon. The Time Masters always cared most about Rip anyway.

Ray's angry shouts and accusations go a long way towards proving Mick's bona fides. 

Savage shows up so that he can gloat at Rip and take Kendra. Turns out the Time Masters were working with him after all; the bug Ginny left on Rip's clothing passes along all sorts of interesting stories as Mick and a cold-eyed Sara do the work of scattering the bombs Ginny has so passionately created for Mick. 

Stories about aliens attacking. Stories about manipulation. Stories about something called the Oculus, which they use to guide the timeline and all the people in it into the paths they want.

Snart and Jax guard their backs and disable the other time ships. It’s a nice task, not easy but straightforward and non-violent; it’s a good task for good men.

“Disabling the ships will mean that they die when we blow the rest of this place,” Sara says, hands moving swiftly and surely on the bomb she was pinning into place under yet another console. “You realize that, right?”

“Yes,” Mick says. “Got a problem with that?”

“No,” Sara says. “Not at all.”

She’s lying, of course; with her history in the Assassins and the bloodlust that came back with her death, Sara likes to fancy herself hardened inside. But she doesn’t _want_ to be a killer. Not like Mick, who never was anything but. 

“The only portions of the ships being disabled are the flight drives, so they can’t follow us,” Mick says instead. “If they think about putting their shields up, they might manage.”

Mick thinks that Sara must know, somewhere deep inside of her, that he’s lying, that he has no intention of sparing those whom he has decided must die, but her shoulders relax a little, shed a little guilt, her steps a little more carefree. Sara will do what she must, but she’s no killer. 

More important to Mick, though, is that she’s indiscreet. When they fly away and leave this place in flames, Jax will stare at his hands and worry, and Sara will reassure him with poisoned words carried by an innocent mouth, and it will be all the more convincing for it. 

The comms crackled to life. “Okay, we’ve finished fiddling with the ships,” Jax says. 

“Good,” Mick says. “Stay where you are.”

“Um, do you mean just me?” Jax asks.

Mick stops dead where he is. “Why?” he asks sharply, but his mind is racing forward and providing him with the answer already. 

As he says, he knows Snart. He knows Snart’s buttons, Snart’s ticks, Snart’s _goodness_.

Snart’s going after the Oculus. 

The idiot can’t bear the thought of millions of lives dangling on the Time Masters’ strings and he can’t leave well enough alone, no matter how very much _not_ his business it is. But Snart’s not smart enough to tackle something like that himself; he’s excellent with mechanics but not with the sort of technical knowledge you need to make guesses about centuries-advanced technology. He’s smart enough to know it, too.

“He’s gone after Ray,” Mick snarls before Jax can repeat whatever crap Snart fed him, spinning on his heel.

“I thought we were picking them up after we finish?” Sara says, jogging to keep up.

“Change of plans,” Mick says curtly. “Whoever’s still in the cages, you take back to the ship. Rip goes into the room; the others can be free. I’ll get Snart and Ray.”

By the time he makes it to the Oculus, blasting through the few guards that seem inclined to actually alert anyone to what’s happening, Ray and Snart are standing there in the center of the platform, arguing fiercely. 

“– you don’t understand,” Ray snaps, much like a fierce puppy defending his pathetic territory. “This is what Rip saw. This is the future; this is how I die – he explained it all to me. And it’s _okay_. All my life I've wanted to make a difference. Creating a future for everyone without the Time Masters influence, that counts.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Snart is saying stubbornly, because while no one accepts the cold, hard facts of life better than Snart, he’s also the sort of asshole who insist on them _being_ facts and not just some mumbo-jumbo crap spouted by the Time Masters. It’s a trait that has led him to doing what everyone else called impossible more than once.

“No, really, there isn’t,” Ray says. “There’s a failsafe to prevent tampering, which includes trying to blow this thing up. I have to maintain contact with the failsafe in order to destroy the Oculus.”

“Does it have to be human contact?” Mick asks, striding forward. 

Ray starts when he sees Mick. “Oh, Mick,” he says, sounding relieved. “Snart told me about –”

“Don’t care, not interested. Is human contact required?”

“Yeah, I have to keep it pushed down -”

“Can we shove in something to keep it in place?” Mick asks, already stripping off his shoulder pads and breastplate; they’re heavy, they’ll do.

“That won’t work; the pressure needs to be in exactly the formation my fingers are in now,” Ray argues. "Someone has to stand here until it blows, holding it down."

“No,” Snart says, voice quiet and defeated. “ _No_ , Mick.”

Mick ignores him. “You’ve got your fingers in the right position?” he asks.

“Yeah, got them right now, but the stuff you’re holding won’t be able to keep it down in the right formation – ouch! What’re you doing?”

Mick finishes stuffing the gear in on top of Ray’s hands and eyes it critically. “That’ll keep your hands in place,” he says.

“Well, yes, but _I’m_ keeping my hands in place,” Ray says, puzzled and maybe a little hurt. “And I’ve already said I’m willing to die; there’s no need to make _sure_.”

“You’re not going to die,” Mick says, rolling his eyes. “Snart doesn’t want you dead, and there’s no need.”

“Mick, _no_ ,” Snart says, and closes his eyes.

“Wait, there isn’t?” Ray says, blinking. “But how would –”

Mick shoots both Ray’s arms off at the elbow.

Snart’s kind enough to smash the butt of his cold gun into Ray’s head a moment later to stop his screaming.

“Watch my back,” Mick instructs, kneeling to tourniquet Ray’s arms with some of the rope from his belt. Wouldn’t do for the moron to bleed out on the way back to the Waverider.

Snart moves to stand between him and the outside world, gun at ready.

“Who told you,” he says tonelessly, more statement than question.

“Told me what?” Mick says, focused on his task.

“What he said to me in the 1870s,” Snart says. “About me being useless without my hand.”

“Jax,” Mick says. “Besides, we needed his hands in the Oculus; he said so himself.”

“Yes,” Snart says. “But you would’ve tried to think of another method if he hadn’t.”

Mick says nothing. What’s there to say? Snart’s his, and no one hurts him: physically, emotionally, or otherwise, or else they hurt, too.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Snart says.

“I know,” Mick says. “I want to.”

“I know,” Snart says, and he doesn’t just mean Palmer. 

Mick pauses. “How long?”

Snart’s smile is brittle. “You ever decide to own anyone else the way you have me, Mick,” he says, not answering the question, “I’ll gut them myself.”

Something warm unfurls in Mick’s belly.

Snart did always say the sweetest things.

“Not even Jax?” Mick asks.

“No one,” Snart says. “Not like me. It’d be for Jax’s own good, you know; he wouldn’t be able to handle it. It’d end in death anyway.”

This might be true.

“Just me,” Snart continues. “Even if I piss you off, even if I step out of line. Even if I ain’t up to standard anymore.”

“You’re mine,” Mick says, because sometimes Snart fixates on little things like murder instead of the things that really matter. “That’s the only standard you ever have to meet.”

Snart doesn’t quite believe him, but that’s okay. Mick’ll show him. Mick will hurt him, and hurt people for him, and in the end they’ll die together in flame, but for the time being, Mick can be generous.

He’ll ask about Jax again when Snart’s not feeling so touchy. 

“Let’s go before the thing overloads,” Mick says, and they do, shooting their way out even as Len encases the entire Oculus in a wall of ice that will delay any would-be rescuers. 

Before they can try, though, the explosions start to go off. Bomb after bomb after bomb, in a glorious medley of fire and death that even Snart should be able to appreciate. 

“Is that the _overture_?” Snart says, eyes starting to shine, life sneaking back into his eyes like a thief as they run pell-mell through the flames and confusion towards the Waverider. “You made a goddamn V-for-Vendetta reference?”

“It was that or Ride of the Valkyries,” Mick says with a smirk. “And I still got plans for that one.”

Snart starts laughing, only the slightest edge of hysteria in it, but they make it to the Waverider and fly off before the Oculus blows. Mick’s only regret, watching all those little ants scramble across their flaming pyre, is that the Oculus explosion is so massive that Ginny jumps them back into the timestream before they get caught up in it, and so he doesn’t get to watch them fry.

“What happened?” Jax says, staring at Ray’s bloody stumps with mute horror. “What _happened_?”

“Let me show you a little something that the Waverider can do,” Mick says instead, carrying Ray to the medbay. “Something the Waverider’s _always_ been able to do.”

Snart sits down heavy when Ginny activates the reparation beam to start rebuilding Ray’s arms. He doesn’t speak as Mick explains how the regen system works, how Gideon took scans of them when they first came on for just this eventuality, how easy it is, how simple. He just stares mutely at the hand being reconstructed from empty viscera, his face empty with shock and betrayal and the sheer lack of understanding at the world’s cruelty, the good kid fucked over by humanity’s treachery yet again.

The others are not so quiet, Sara and Jax and Stein. Their voices start with confusion, then slow realization, then growing anger. Rage. _Betrayal._

Mick has Ginny wake Ray up as the process is completing. 

“Oh,” Ray says, staring at his hands as they finish reforming, every last whorl on every last fingertip reshaping itself. “Oh. But Snart…”

Snart says nothing and doesn’t move, but his right hand is there, visible for all to see.

“It’s not too late for him, is it?” Ray says to Mick desperately. “Can you fix it?”

“Yes,” Mick says, and undoes the buckles keeping Ray tied to the chair. Haircut might be a moron, but now that he’s gotten what he deserved for what he said about Snart, Mick is at ease with him again. He’s not so bad, really; takes the hurt he deserves with a good, solid composure, like you should, and moves on from there. Mick’s never been sure why people get twitchy about it. “Get him in here.”

Sara and Stein help move an unmoving Snart into the chair. Ray buckles him in with his brand new hands. Mick nods at Gideon, and soon enough Snart has two hands again, mended but never unbroken. His eyes are still vacant, but now they glisten with tears.

It’s not Snart’s _worst_ fear, being made useless, forced to trust other people for basic tasks – that nightmare is reserved for waking up one day and finding himself to be his father, which Mick thinks is frankly absurd – but it’s up there. Mick knows that Snart was learning to cope, that he’d accepted that it wasn’t the end of the world, a pickpocket losing his dominant weapon; he knew also that Snart had already sketched out a few possible prosthetic options, that he’d already moved on with his life because life didn’t stop when you lost a limb, it just kept going in new and different ways. Hell, Snart had probably started looking forward to the challenge.

But Snart’s Mick’s, and if Mick _can_ fix him, _can_ stitch him back up either inside or out, then it’s his right and his privilege to do so. Fire destroys; man rebuilds. It’s the natural cycle of things.

When Snart finally does shake himself out of his stupor, concerned crewmates surrounding him, he ignores them and stares straight at Mick. “Hurt him,” he says, and his eyes burn cold like the heart of a dying star. “I want to _see_ it.”

There are no protests from the others.

Mick smiles. 

“Kendra, Savage, and Rip’s family first,” he says, because he’s patient like that. The heroes smile, but so does Snart, because he knows Mick pretty well, too. Rip will see his death coming, like the train at the end of the tunnel, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it’s coming.

Mick sends the crew off to their beds to sleep the sleep of the just and, in the excitement of a quest to save their friend and the world, forget the glut of lives they just took. As for him, he takes Snart back to Snart’s room, since Mick’s is currently serving as a prison cell. 

Without Mick even needing to request it, Ginny pulls up the room’s soundproofing and replays the recording she made of the Vanishing Point, burning and exploding, and Mick watches it on repeat, lounging back on the bed, his legs spread and Snart kneeling between them. Watching the flames take over each building, watching it collapse and consign itself to ash, listening to the supports creak and the people scream, a warm mouth around his dick and his fingers running through Snart’s close-clipped hair as Snart looks up at him adoringly. Ginny purrs in his ears and materializes a beer by his right hand. 

It’s everything he likes in life, all together.

The ship is his, Ginny is his, Snart is his. 

Mick is content.

“You’re mine,” he tells Snart pleasantly, smiling at the screen, master of his dominion.

Snart pulls off of him and wraps his brand new hand where his mouth had been; and curled around his wrist is a very old cat’s collar, looped like a bracelet and tied tight. “Yeah,” he says, eyes alive and happy in his own way, effortlessly ignoring the sounds of screams and explosions behind him in favor of Mick. He’s still tender inside, that heart of his bleeding from the cuts Rip made to it, but Mick will help. Mick will take Snart and keep him safe from the whole world. “And you’re mine.”

Mick runs his hand through Snart’s hair and smiles.


End file.
